A Fun Afternoon

It's fun to explore Second Life with a friend. Here Lightning and Jackman are exploring a new Linden continent in a vehicle provided there. We go into unoccupied houses, stores, clubs, you name it. It eventually became slow and we both crashed several times, but it was fun until the lag got to us.

Happy New Year!

The Nut 2011

This year VSTE is attending "The Nut" twice. I want to be sure everyone that wants to see it and might feel strangely going alone gets the chance. We went December 18th and we are going again December 28th. These photos are from the 18th. Five VSTE members were present: Leko, Esteban, Cyrus, Elijah, and myself.

"The Nut" is an abbreviated Nutcracker performed by the Ballet Pixelle company in Second Life. I've seen it at least once before and I feel like I have seen it two different years before. It was always impressive. I'm not sure how so many avatars coordinate all the action. I have seen errors that I'm not sure were seen by all. They were likely limitations of my own computer and I'm the only one who saw them.

This year the experience was enhanced by my new computer with a better graphics card than I've had before and by Leko Littlebird's new set design. Leko is a theater designer in real life. He teaches theater design at my college alma matter. He made suggestions to Ballet Pixelle's management and was given the job of redesigning the sets they had been using for years. They were much improved. You can see the sides of the stage in last year's photos. This year the sets went beyond the stage and made for a more immerse audience experience.

I was intending to add captions, but I don't want to spoil the flow of the images. Hopefully you know the story. Compare this set, and my computer's graphics, to last year's. Beautiful!

Christmastime in Second Life

Christmastime is festive in Second Life. Maybe it's because it's so easy to make a party, no clean up, no expense, everyone looks great in their holiday clothes that always fit perfectly. Playing with friends, listening to Christmas music, is an enjoyable way to relax after the hustle and bustle of real life holiday busyness. 

This is a holiday party at ISTE on the roof of the headquarters building, one of the weekly socials ISTE holds to help educators in Second Life network. It was fun. People came and went and it lasted much longer than planned.

Part of the fun is deciding what to wear. In Second Life what you wear can be an entire avatar. This fellow (below) was a reindeer. Click the photo to enlarge it. His avatar was quite unique and interesting. The double knees, with the lower one bending backwards, creeped me out. I teased him about that but he didn't think I was funny.

 

There were things to do besides dance. Cyrus is caught half-way down a chimney here. I was trying to do this at the same time. I'm beholding to him for having the faster clicker because I would not have been attractive with my legs kicking in the air in this dress!

 

I did enjoy the snow angel animation though.

 After leaving the party I tried my new fireworks from the top of Expedition Central. They are fabulous!

During the VSTE Conference

We had in world sessions to match our physical sessions. Here Spiff and Scott are sharing about the SIGVE of ISTE. People were in the conference room in Roanoke observing and asking questions while avatars were on ISTE Island participating, too.

Sometime later than usual Monday night, while in Roanoke, we met on VSTE Island for a game of paint ball. I'll just say... poor Izzy! :)

Last Class

VSTE Island hosted a graduate class for teacher recertification this fall. Here are some photos from the last online class meeting. Before the class Cyrus read a story about, and then took us on a tour of, The Golden Gate Bridge. It was a quick tour of a beautiful realistic reproduction of the physical world.

Following that we returned to VSTE Island and had a little ceremony for our three graduate students. Mandie created the venue and certificates. Hey and Bee spoke.

 

This is the classroom meeting space at about 500 meters.

 

Cyrus always does a nice job of preparing for our meetings with nice slides previewing what we are about to see. He often has some historical or scientific information for us.

 

As avatars gathered, Leko put out cushions for them.

 

Cyrus read to us from  a short story from an old travel book by 1920s adventurer Richard Halliburton called Book of Marvels.

Here is a video of the sim http://youtu.be/pgPYmcW_wYs

... and our class celebration...

 

Flying Machine Races

What a good time! The pictures tell the story. A newcomer won the prize, stealing it away from Cyrus at the last minute!